One Common Faith | Page 9

the All-Knower
in a world devoid of any man that hath known Him. He is indeed the
Creator without a creation."(18)

"The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing
conception..."
The objection most commonly raised against the foregoing conception
of religion is the assertion that the differences among the revealed
faiths are so fundamental that to present them as stages or aspects of
one unified system of truth does violence to the facts. Given the
confusion surrounding the nature of religion, the reaction is
understandable. Chiefly, however, such an objection offers Bahá'ís an
invitation to set the principles reviewed here more explicitly in the
evolutionary context provided in Bahá'u'lláh's writings.
The differences referred to fall into the categories of either practice or
doctrine, both of them presented as the intent of the relevant scriptures.
In the case of religious customs governing personal life, it is helpful to
view the subject against the background of comparable features of
material life. It is most unlikely that diversity in hygiene, dress,
medicine, diet, transportation, warfare, construction or economic
activity, however striking, would any longer be seriously advanced in

support of a theory that humanity does not in fact constitute one people,
single and unique. Until the opening of the twentieth century, such
simplistic arguments were commonplace, but historical and
anthropological research now provides a seamless panorama of the
process of cultural evolution by which these and countless other
expressions of human creativity came into existence, were transmitted
through successive generations, underwent gradual metamorphoses and
often spread to enrich the lives of peoples in far distant lands. That
present-day societies represent a wide spectrum of such phenomena,
therefore, does not in any way define a fixed and immutable identity of
the peoples concerned, but merely distinguishes the stage through
which given groups are--or at least until recently have been--passing.
Even so, all such cultural expressions are now in a state of fluidity in
consequence of the pressures of planetary integration.
A similar evolutionary process, Bahá'u'lláh indicates, has characterized
the religious life of humankind. The defining difference lies in the fact
that, rather than representing simply the accidents of history's ongoing
method of trial and error, such norms were explicitly prescribed in each
case, as integral features of one or another revelation of the Divine,
embodied in scripture, their integrity scrupulously maintained over a
period of centuries. While certain features of each code of conduct
would eventually fulfil their purpose and in time be overshadowed by
concerns of a different nature brought on by the process of social
evolution, the code itself would lose none of its authority during the
long stage of human progress in which it played a vital role in training
behaviour and attitudes. "These principles and laws, these
firmly-established and mighty systems", Bahá'u'lláh asserts, "have
proceeded from one Source, and are the rays of one Light. That they
differ one from another is to be attributed to the varying requirements
of the ages in which they were promulgated."(19)
To argue, therefore, that differences of regulations, observances and
other practices constitute any significant objection to the idea of
revealed religion's essential oneness is to miss the purpose that these
prescriptions served. More seriously, it misses the fundamental
distinction between the eternal and the transitory features of religion's

function. The essential message of religion is immutable. It is, in
Bahá'u'lláh's words, "the changeless Faith of God, eternal in the past,
eternal in the future".(20) Its role in opening the way for the soul to
enter into an evermore mature relationship with its Creator--and in
endowing it with an ever-greater measure of moral autonomy in
disciplining the animal impulses of human nature--is not at all
irreconcilable with its providing auxiliary guidance that enhances the
process of civilization building.
The concept of progressive revelation places the ultimate emphasis on
recognition of the revelation of God at its appearance. The failure of the
generality of humankind in this respect has, time and again, condemned
entire populations to a ritualistic repetition of ordinances and practices
long after these latter have fulfilled their purpose and now merely
stultify moral advance. Sadly, in the present day, a related consequence
of such failure has been to trivialize religion. At precisely the point in
its collective development where humanity began to struggle with the
challenges of modernity, the spiritual resource on which it had
principally depended for moral courage and enlightenment was fast
becoming a subject of mockery, first at those levels where decisions
were being made about the direction society should take, and
eventually in ever-widening circles of the general population. There is
little cause for surprise, then, that this most devastating of the many
betrayals of trust from which human confidence has suffered should, in
the course of time, undermine the foundations of belief itself. So it is
that Bahá'u'lláh